Young, Michael W. 1937–

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Young, Michael W. 1937–

PERSONAL: Born January 13, 1937, in Urmston, Lancashire, England; son of Charles and Eva (Winnard) Young; divorced; children: two sons. Ethnicity: "Anglo-Saxon" Education: University of London, B.A. (with honours), 1963, M.A. (with distinction), 1965; Australian National University, Ph.D., 1969; Cambridge University, M.A., 1970. Politics: Liberal.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Horniman Museum, London, England, assistant curator, 1963–64; Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, assistant lecturer, 1970–74; Australian National University, Canberra, fellow, 1974–83, senior fellow in anthropology, 1983–98, visiting fellow, 1999–.

MEMBER: Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (fellow), Royal Anthropological Institute (fellow), Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, Australian Anthropological Society (fellow).

AWARDS, HONORS: Nominated as Bronislaw Malinowski's official biographer, 1992; shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography and the British Academy Book Prize, both 2005, both for Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884–1920.

WRITINGS:

Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values, and Social Control in a Massim Society, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England), 1971.

(Editor) The Ethnography of Malinowski: The Trobriand Islands, 1915–18, Routledge (Boston, MA), 1979.

Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1983.

(Editor) Malinowski among the Magi: The Natives of Mailu, Routledge (New York, NY), 1988.

Malinowski's Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography, 1915–1918, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1998.

(With Julia Clark) An Anthropologist in Papua: The Photography of F.E. Williams, 1922–1939, University of Hawai'i Press (Honolulu, HI), 2001.

Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884–1920, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2005.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A second volume of Malinowski's biography.

SIDELIGHTS: Michael W. Young is an anthropologist whose books include Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values, and Social Control in a Massim Society, an ethnographic study of ceremonial exchange in Goodenough Island, in the Massim region of eastern Papua New Guinea. Young wrote the book based on his research in the Massim villages of Kalauna and Bwaidoga on Goodenough Island. Fighting with Food outlines the importance and social significance of food to the Massim people. Young illustrates how the production, distribution, and use of food forms the basis for social structure on Goodenough Island. The Massim people gather into villages, which are organized by clans. Organization of clans is based on patrilineal descent. Leadership of the village is directly reflected by the quality and quantity of production of an individual's garden and by that person's knowledge of "garden magic."

Fighting with Food refers to the Massim tradition of "abutu," which is the Massim term for food exchanges. Abutu exchanges involve a person who feels they have been wronged in some manner. Instead of taking their grievances to a court, they will initiate an abutu. The people involved in the abutu try to recruit as many supporters as possible for their side of the argument. The more people involved, the greater the chance of the food being of such high quality and of such large quantity that the other party will be shamed by not being able to return a proportionate amount. Hence, this "fighting with food" weaves networks of social structures and is an important mode of conflict resolution. D.G. Bettison in Pacific Affairs commented on the questions raised by Young, noting that they "are an indication of more studies to come" and that students "can look forward to reading them." Sharon W. Tiffany, writing for American Anthropologist, praised Young's Fighting with Food, calling it "well researched" and a "valuable addition to the literature on the economic systems of Oceania."

Young's 1983 book, Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna, is an extension of Fighting with Food, concentrating on the social structure of the Massim as a whole. Magicians of Manumanua focuses on legendary individuals within the Kalauna village. In general, the myths of the Massim have concentrated on certain individual's ability to manipulate and control nature to influence their harvests. These myths are used to bolster different clans' claims on leadership within Kalauna. Young seeks to show how the myths have become part of both the individual's personal life and the history of the village and of the tribe. Magicians of Manumanua also outlines the changes that had occurred between Young's initial research in the late 1960s and his subsequent visits in the 1970s. Roy Wagner, writing in American Anthropologist, praised the book, calling it a "modern classic" and emphasizing the wish that "other Melanesian peoples [may] come to deserve such an ethnographer!"

Young compiled a series of photographs by fellow South Pacific anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski for his 1998 work, Malinowski's Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography, 1915–1918. Young's book includes scenes of islanders in the South Pacific as they engage in their daily life. Especially notable are pictures that depict the use of shells as a form of currency between the islands. Young includes writings from Malinowski's diaries, books, and letters to accompany the photographs. Suzanne MacNeille in the New York Times Book Review praised the "engagingly written text and colorful quotations," concluding that the book will be "a pleasure for the general reader."

Young collaborated with Julia Clark on his next book, An Anthropologist in Papua: The Photography of F.E. Williams. Through William's photographs and some of his own words, Young and Clark chronicle the twenty years that the anthropologist spent studying the native inhabitants of Papua, New Guinea. An Anthropologist in Papua celebrates Williams' career and groundbreaking work that changed the field of visual anthropology. Writing for the Australian Journal of Anthropology, Michael Goddard observed that An Anthropologist in Papua is "an unusually revealing book, for it manages to expose something of the character and thought of the diffident, self-contained Williams through the combination of his photography with textual fragments and the annotations of the authors."

In 2004, Young published the eagerly anticipated first volume of his biography of Bronislaw Malinowski, one of the founding fathers of social anthropology. Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist covers the first thirty-six years of one of the most colorful and charismatic social scientists of the twentieth century. From his birth in Krakow, Poland, to his marriage in Melbourne and his journeys in the South Pacific, Young brings Malinowski's story to life in extensive detail. Australian Journal of Anthropology contributor Grant McCall described the book as "serious in intent," further commenting that it is "written with a characteristic elegance of style." In a later review for the same publication, James Urry regarded the book as "a masterful mixture of literary biography and intellectual history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, September, 1974, Sharon W. Tiffany, review of Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values, and Social Control in a Massim Society, p. 602; March, 1985, Roy Wagner, review of Magicians of Manumanua: Living Myth in Kalauna, p. 204.

ANU Reporter, November 17, 1999, John Reid, "Powerful Images May Induce Daydreams," p. 9.

Australian Journal of Anthropology, April, 2001, Grant McCall, "The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research," p. 87; April, 2004, Michael Goddard, review of An Anthropologist in Papua: The Photography of F.E. Williams, 1922–1939, p. 123; August, 2005, James Urry, "Anthropology's Homer: Michael Young's Malinowski," p. 247.

Choice, September, 1994, L. Conton, review of Magicians of Manumanua, p. 153.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, September, 2001, Michael O'Hanlon, review of Malinowski's Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography, 1915–1918, p. 597; March, 2005, Sydel Silverman, review of Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884–1920, p. 166.

New York Times Book Review, June 13, 1999, Suzanne MacNeille, "There's No Substitute for Fieldwork," p. 20.

Oceania, September, 2001, Jadran Mimica, Malinowski's Kiriwina, p. 80.

Pacific Affairs, winter, 1972–1973, D.G. Bettison, review of Fighting with Food, pp. 628-629; spring, 1985, Frederick H. Damon, review of Magicians of Manumanua, pp. 177-178.